ELYRIA — Rennell Malone asked a woman he spent a portion of a night with to tell police that he was with her the entire night, even though he left for a time, the woman testified Tuesday in the fourth day of Malone’s murder trial.

The night Malone allegedly asked Andrea Gilliam to lie about was either the night of June 13, 2001, into June 14, 2001, or June 14 into June 15, the timeframe when Diane Utsey-Henderson was killed in her Amherst Avenue home in Lorain.

Gilliam testified that the request to lie from Malone, whom she dated, worked with and remains friends with, made her feel uncomfortable.

Malone’s defense attorney, Kenneth Ortner, tried to counter Gilliam’s allegation — saying Malone told police that he hadn’t been with her the entire time.

She also testified that after Utsey-Henderson was killed, she felt like Malone was using her even as he stopped drinking, using drugs and began attending church.

Malone, 47, has repeatedly denied killing 44-year-old Utsey-Henderson, whose partially clad body was found in the bedroom of her home. She had been beaten and stabbed repeatedly. She died of blood loss from the stab wounds, likely on June 14, 2001, Lorain County Coroner Paul Matus testified last week.

But Ortner has questioned the accuracy of the time of death because Matus had originally estimated she died on June 15. Matus said he changed the time of death because of eyewitnesses who Williams originally believed had said they saw Utsey-Henderson alive on June 14, but he later learned they had last seen her on June 13.

Anita Marie Taylor, Malone’s cousin, also took the stand Tuesday and said she and her uncle went to Utsey-Henderson’s home and talked to police after she noticed police tape around the house. She said she was the first one to tell Malone that his ex-girlfriend was dead.

“He didn’t know what happened,” she said.

Ortner also continued to suggest that police ignored another suspect in the case, James “Poochie” Williams, a married man who was also seeing Utsey-Henderson and another woman. Williams has said he was in Columbus with that other woman when Utsey-Henderson was killed.

Police Sgt. Mark Carpentiere testified that police talked with Williams, but Malone had been the chief suspect in Utsey-Henderson’s murder.

“I don’t know that (Williams) was what you’d call a suspect, but we definitely wanted to talk to him,” Carpentiere said.

Prosecutors and police have suggested that Malone used a key found at his home that fit a lock at Utsey-Henderson’s home to break into the house and kill her. They have also confirmed that his DNA was on a toothpick found at the scene, and that his fingerprints were found in the house.

But Tremont Malone, Rennell Malone’s brother and current cellmate at the county jail, testified that his brother had lived with Utsey-Henderson at the house, had helped her move in and assembled much of the furniture in the house.

Rennell Malone may take the stand when the trial resumes today before county Common Pleas Judge Mark Betleski, who will decide the case instead of a jury.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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